


#ThisAintTruthOrDare #WeOnlyPlayDare

by Naladot



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Humor, M/M, Truth or Dare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5936569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jae and Junhyeok get caught up in a series of escalating dares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#ThisAintTruthOrDare #WeOnlyPlayDare

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girltalk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girltalk/gifts).



> Written for the lovely kalopsia who prompted "jae and junhyeok keep making stupid bets/competitions with each other, and eventually one of them goes too far" on my Valentine's Day fic gifting post. Everything in here is pretty much her fault.

It begins so innocently.

“Jae,” Junhyeok says as he walks into the kitchen of their dorm, “I dare you to go a whole day without speaking English at all.”

If Jae were smart, he would laugh off the dare, and go about his English-ridden day.

But although Jae did get good grades in college (he _did_ , dammit, why won’t anyone believe him?) he can’t think through long-term consequences of his actions as well as he probably should be able to.

“No hablo Ingles,” he announces.

Junhyeok rolls his eyes.

 

 

Twenty-four hours pass almost painlessly, save for the huge bite marks Jae leaves on the inside of his own cheek when he starts to swear in English after Sungjin drops an amp on his foot, and it gets really annoying having to ask Brian how to say things in Korean through super long-winded explanations of the concept he’s trying to get at. (“What’s the word for a person who won’t stop bothering you and when he’s bothering you he’s really mean and you get sick of seeing his face?” “A jackass?” “Yes, Junhyeok is a jackass, thank you.”) But he succeeds, and at exactly 8:23 AM the next day, a full twenty-four hours and one minute after the dare was issued, Jae runs into Junhyeok’s room and yells “Hah! I did it! I dare you not to talk for a whole day!”

Junhyeok looks stunned, and then he glowers.

But the day is pleasantly quiet. Jae speaks English all day long.

 

 

The next day, Junhyeok arrives at the practice room twenty minutes after Jae, with a slightly maniacal grin on his face.

“You thought this was over, didn’t you?” he asks, perching on the piano bench next to the chair where Jae is strumming his guitar. Jae tries not to flinch, because he’s supposed to be _cool_ , but he doesn’t like that tone of voice at all.

“I thought what was over?”

“You’re the one who made this into a war, Jae. You can’t back out now.”

“I’m not backing out.”

“You scared?”

“I’m not scared!”

“Okay, good. I dare you to post a shirtless selfie on Instagram.”

Jae blanches. “You dare me to do what?”

“I thought you liked attention,” Junhyeok says innocently. “You don’t have to. Of course, if you don’t do it, that means you forfeit.”

Jae isn’t entirely sure what “forfeit” means because his Korean kind of sucks, as his parents are constantly reminding him, but he has a pretty good idea that it means “Junhyeok wins and makes fun of you for the rest of time for being a loser.”

“Fine,” Jae says with gritted teeth.

 

 

Sungjin very kindly offers to steal contouring make-up from the stockpile on the second floor of the JYP building so Jae can “define his abs,” but no matter what angle Jae looks at the mirror from, he can’t really shake the anxiety gained from a lot of years of high school and college. He doesn’t _care_ , okay, but “scrawny” and “stick man” will leave some scars on a guy’s self-image. It’s nice that all his celebrity friends hit up the gym at all hours of the night and compare the size of their biceps, or… Whatever it is you’re supposed to do at the gym. See, Jae doesn’t _go._ He’s plenty healthy with a nice regimen of badminton, a little running on purpose, and a lot of accidental running after missed busses (he tends to get distracted). Becoming a gym rat has never appealed to him.

“You look fine,” someone says behind him. Jae realizes then that the rest of his band have crowded into the bathroom.

“I know that,” Jae snaps. Dowoon comes up beside him and lifts his own shirt, poking a finger at his stomach. Even Dowoon has better abs than him. Jae suddenly realizes that “chocolate abs” refers to the shape of the candy bar. He’s been wondering about that for a really long time. Chocolate would be good right now.

“Jae,” Junhyeok says, pushing his way to the front. “I was mean. You don’t need to, like, expose yourself to the internet. I can come up with another dare.”

This is all very nice and sappy and whatever, but it kicks Jae’s competitive side into high gear. He scowls at his reflection, and snaps a photo. He then opens Instagram, slaps on a filter, and ignores his growing trepidation.

“Not—trying—to—look—like—a—jerk,” he mutters as he types the caption, “But this goes out to all the people who called me scrawny and ugly back in the day. Never too old to learn to love yourself. Hashtag love yourself, hashtag body positive, hashtag I was dared to do this.”

He hits post and immediately regrets it. But he can’t show that on his face, so he pulls his shirt back on, and then rounds on Junhyeok.

“You wanted to raise the stakes,” he says. “Fine. Let’s raise the stakes.”

Junhyeok pales a little and glances at Sungjin, as if asking for an intervention, but Jae is everyone’s _hyung_ so they can’t—okay, that’s not true, Jae gets bossed around by all of them all the time. But they’re way too entertained to stop him now.

“I’ll post a selfie—” Junhyeok starts.

“Nah,” Jae cuts in. “You need something that will actually scare you, something that will actually bruise your ego. I dare you…” He trails off, trying to think of something that will actually scare Junhyeok. Junhyeok is kind of fearless about a lot of things, with the exception of—

Jae snaps his fingers. “I’ve got it.”

“Is this going to be something stupid?” Junhyeok asks. “I’ll post a dancing video if you make me.”

“Nope.” Jae grins. “Not stupid. I dare you to go upstairs and ask Yubin out on a date.”

Junhyeok freezes for a moment. Then he turns around, and marches confidently out of the bathroom.

“Jae,” Sungjin says pleasantly, reaching up to clap a hand on Jae’s shoulder. “If she says yes, I’m going to have to kill you.” He smiles and pats Jae’s shoulder a few times.

Wonpil groans. “He would be insufferable.”

“Come on, there’s no way—” Jae’s thoughts grind to a halt as a deeply buried memory starts to claw its way to the surface. If Jae were going to appraise Junhyeok’s attractiveness, he has way too many memories of things like Junhyeok clipping his toenails while sitting on the couch, or making crude innuendos every time someone holds a guitar the wrong way—in short, Jae likes Junhyeok a lot, but he can’t imagine anyone finding him appealing. So he tends to ignore the weird adjectives other people apply to Junhyeok, like “charming,” and “smooth,” and worst of all, “sexy.”

These adjectives had been buried very deeply in his memory up until this current, terrible moment in time. Now the memory has returned to him in vivid, awful detail. A few months ago, he’d had dinner with Jimin and Hyerim, and they had ranked the attractiveness of their JYP coworkers (he’s pretty sure they just wanted to get a rise out of him). He’d been intrigued by their assessment of the Got7 members, surprised when they ranked Jinyoung above Jaebum (he didn’t see it, but who was he to judge) and amused as they complained about how Bambam’s ego grew in proportion to his height. Then their conversation had, predictably, turned to Jae’s own band. “Junhyeok is charming,” Jimin had said with a sly smile, glancing at Jae. He’d tried not to reel from the shock.

“He’s kind of sexy,” Hyerim had laughed.

“I’m going to forget I ever heard that,” Jae had announced, “because otherwise I will have to disown the both of you.”

Now he really, really wishes he hadn’t been so good at suppressing his memory. Because he’s worried that there is the slight, horrific possibility that Yubin will actually say yes.

“Shit,” Jae announces, and runs out of the room, dashing up the stairs to the next floor.

He rounds the corner just in time to see Yubin reach up and ruffle Junhyeok’s hair. It’s a condescending kind of gesture, and Jae stumbles to a halt, his heart beating out _please don’t be into younger guys._ Then she turns, notices Jae, winks, and heads back into the practice room.

Junhyeok’s chest is puffed up with pride and his steps are a little too light as he walks up to Jae. “I did it,” he says with a cheeky grin. 

Jae forces himself to be calm, because Junhyeok preys on weakness. “What did she say?”

Junhyeok shrugs. “She said I’m too young for her.” He tilts his head to the side and smiles a little. “But she also said I was very cute.”

“I thought you wanted to be, and I quote, ‘a sexy manly dude.’”

“She didn’t call you cute,” his smile grows, “so you don’t understand.”

Jae wants to point out that _plenty_ of girls, even the ones in this building, have called him cute. But he doesn’t get a chance.

“Anyway,” Junhyeok continues, “I’ve already thought of what I’m going to dare you to do next.”

 

 

The next day, Jae takes a deep breath and walks into the practice room with his hands shaking. The underarms of his shirt are damp with a cold sweat and his glasses keep sliding around on his nose. It’s such a stupid thing to be nervous about, but Jae hardly got any sleep last night because he kept thinking about it. He has come up with at least twenty versions of how this scene plays out; the worst of them are the ones where the rest of the band just _doesn’t care._

“Hey, guys,” Jae says. His voice shakes a little and cracks at the end, like he’s still thirteen. Beautiful. “I need to talk to you about something.”

Everything plays out how Jae imagined it: Sungjin looks up, concerned, and then sets down his guitar. Brian’s brow furrows and he stands up and crosses the room. Wonpil slides up next to Sungjin, Dowoon behind him looking worried and confused. Junhyeok hangs back, his face impassive, trying to look like he doesn’t know what Jae is about to say.

Jae takes a deep breath. His heart is pounding harder than it does before any concert. He just keeps imagining that they’ll say _“Oh, that’s fine, that’s no big deal.”_ And then what will he do?

He catches Junhyeok’s eye and sees a glint of amusement. He thinks Jae is about to back out of this. Jae’s pounding heart settles a little at the sight, because he isn’t going to back out of any stupid dare. There’s no way Junhyeok is going to win.

He takes another deep breath and looks at his shoes. He’d picked these tennis shoes up a long time ago when he was still trapped in pre-debut purgatory, because his mom kept haranguing him about the state of his old ones. Good memories. He doesn’t want to do this.

“So, um. I have to tell you guys something.” Jae keeps staring at his shoes. “I—well, okay. I haven’t told you guys this, but I’ve been talking to my parents and thinking about things long-term, and—well, there’s no easy way to say this, but I’m going to terminate my contract.”

A long silence passes before Jae summons the courage to look up from his shoes. Sungjin, Brian, and Wonpil stare at him with blank expressions. Dowoon looks heartbroken. At least Dowoon cares about him. At least he can always remember that Dowoon didn’t want him to go.

Jae steels himself to hear _“do whatever you want Jae”_ and _“we won’t miss you Jae”_ and _“we don’t need you Jae.”_

But instead, almost in unison, Sungjin, Brian, and Wonpil turn around and look at Junhyeok.

“What kind of dare is that?” Brian says.

“How is that supposed to be funny?” Wonpil asks at the same time.

“Did you really think we’d fall for that?” Sungjin finishes. Dowoon now looks very, very confused.

“What are you looking at me for?” Junhyeok cries out. “He’s the one leaving!”

“Jae’s not leaving,” Sungjin says.

“That wasn’t funny,” Wonpil says.

“Not cool.” Brian folds his arms over his chest.

Junhyeok rolls his eyes and turns back to his keyboard. Sungjin, Brian, and Wonpil turn back around, Dowoon still gaping at them, and Jae feels tears start to smart in his eyes.

“So—you’d miss me if I really left, right?” Jae asks. “You need me, right?”

Dowoon steps forward, a resolved look on his face. Maybe Junhyeok really hasn’t corrupted him yet. He smiles a little, and then he claps Jae into a hug. A moment later, the rest of them are hugging him, too, in a big awkward beautiful dog pile—and yeah, he knows they're doing it to piss off Junhyeok, but a tear slips out, anyway.

“I can’t believe you guys are indulging him,” Junhyeok calls out somewhere in the background.

“I’m going to get you back so bad!” Jae yells.

 

 

“I have to think of something so horrible,” Jae muses as he lies on his bed, hands behind his head, “That Junhyeok _has_ to back down.” He’s mostly avoiding his Instagram, which _sucks_ , but that stupid shirtless selfie has like fifty thousand favorites already, literally, and Junhyeok needs to pay.

On the opposite bed, Brian is playing some sort of noisy game on his phone. “Damn it,” he says under his breath, and the start-up music from the game starts playing again.

“Are you listening to me?” Jae asks.

“Yes.”

“Pay attention to me,” Jae says, sitting up. He throws a pillow at Brian and it bounces of his head. Brian frowns, just slightly. “I’m fighting a war here.”

Brian sighs and rolls his eyes over to Jae’s side of the room. “This whole thing is really stupid.”

“So? I still have to win.”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to help,” Brian throws the pillow back to Jae’s side of the room. “You probably shouldn’t do anything really, actually mean, you know?”

“He made me post a picture without my shirt!” Jae groans. He quickly pulls up Instagram and sees the ever-present orange notification number. He has to get Junhyeok back for this.

“First, he didn’t make you do anything. He actually said you could opt out. Second, he’s playing on your weaknesses? You couldn’t do the same thing for him because he’s kind of an exhibitionist.”

Jae is about to point out that only one person in this dumb band is inclined to walk around naked, and it’s not Junhyeok, but then an idea dawns on him. He’s pretty sure the lightbulb appears over his head, like in a cartoon.

“That’s it,” he says. “That’s brilliant.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“I don’t like it.”

 

 

“It’s _cold,_ ” Junhyeok whines.

“You can always back down.” Jae grins and leans against the doorway, looking around the room at the rest of the band. Sungjin is smiling, but he looks a little uncertain. Dowoon can’t stop snickering behind his hand. Wonpil has his eyes covered, and Brian might be recording the whole thing on his phone.

Junhyeok glares at Jae, and then pulls off his shirt. Then he stops, and glares at Jae again.

Jae shrugs. “I don’t care if you lose this dare or not, you know.”

“You don’t care,” Junhyeok says with gritted teeth. “I’m not going to let you win.” He unbuckles his belt and pulls—well, peels, really—his jeans off. His underwear follows a moment later, and then Junhyeok is standing as naked as he was when he entered this world, save for the pair of black tennis shoes he slips back onto his feet. Without the slightest hesitation, he marches forward to the door of the practice room, yanks it open, and dashes out into the hall.

“Let’s go!” Jae calls over his shoulder, and they all stampede out of the room in pursuit.

Junhyeok zooms up and down the staircases of the JYPE building, shrieking at the top of his lungs. Staff and celebrity alike peek out of the doorways to see what the hell is going on while the rest of Day6 hurtle after him. It goes on this way for a good ten minutes until Jae finally collapses from laughter on the landing of the third floor while Junhyeok sprints out of sight. Shortly after, Jae is joined by an odd assortment of people—Wonpil, who has started crying from laughter, Jaebum and Jinyoung, who look vaguely horrified, Yugyeom on their heels with a huge grin, and Jihyo, who announces, “I have been robbed of my innocence.” Jinyoung pats her on the head, apparently to console her.

“That was a better view than I expected,” says Min as she comes up the stairs with one of the choreographers, laughing hysterically.

At the same time, Yeeun comes down the stairs, holding her hands out in front of her. “I don’t want to know.”

She has to jump out of the way as Junhyeok careens past them again.

 

 

Jae knows— _knows_ —that after the streaking dare, he’s in for something monumentally awful.

But Junhyeok is silent. On the first day, when they’re all just laughing and teasing Junhyeok about streaking, Jae isn’t too worried. On the second day, Junhyeok gets reprimanded by a snickering manager and Junhyeok gives Jae a pointed look, but doesn’t say anything.

After a week, Jae starts to get a little paranoid.

“Has he said anything to you?” he whispers to Wonpil one day as they return to the dorm. Wonpil shakes his head and, very obviously, turns up the volume of his music. Jae kind of thinks that means Junhyeok _has_ said something. But it’s not like he can _ask._

“Can’t you just let this go?” Sungjin asks after a week and a half. Jae has started avoiding Junhyeok at all times except practice, because he’s afraid that the dare is going to come in the form of something really bad. He can’t even articulate what “really bad” is going to look like, because his brain isn’t as naturally inclined to evil as Junhyeok’s.

“I can let it go!” Jae returns. “But Junhyeok won’t, because that’d mean that I won.”

Sungjin pales a little. “Yeah, you’re in for it.” He gives Jae a thumbs up. “Good luck!”

“Thanks a lot.”

The day that it all ends feels so strange that Jae really should have seen it coming a mile away. Sungjin and Dowoon went off to visit family, and Brian had been incredibly evasive about his evening plans, which meant he had a date. Wonpil was having “philosophy club” that night with Jinyoung, which he explained in great detail but Jae pretty much tuned it all out in favor of the video game he was playing. By the time he becomes aware of his surroundings again, Wonpil is gone, and the apartment is eerily silent.

“Hello?” Jae calls out. More silence. It gives him the creeps. Naturally, the creeps should be fought off with a bowl of sugary cereal, so Jae goes into the kitchen for some sweet sustenance. He doesn’t even realize that he’s cornered, until it’s too late.

“I’ve been waiting for this.”

Jae jumps out of his skin and yelps. This motion sends cereal everywhere, bouncing off the ceiling and scattering over all the surfaces in the kitchen. Jae turns on his heels and sees Junhyeok, who watches the cereal scatter around his feet, and then looks up.

“Smooth.”

“You don’t have to be so frickin’ creepy!” Jae looks around and wonders how he’s ever going to clean all this cereal up—he can’t wait for the cleaning lady because they’ll crush them all before that point and anyway his mom always said he needed to take responsibility for his own actions—and then he realizes that Junhyeok is still watching him with gleaming eyes.

Jae puts the cereal box down and reminds himself that he’s a lot taller than Junhyeok. “What?” he demands.

Junhyeok comes into the kitchen, crunching cereal with every step, and leans against the counter. “It took me a while to think of the perfect dare,” he says. He sounds every bit like a villain explaining his evil plan—Jae is the hero in this movie, obviously.

“And now you’ve thought of it,” Jae cuts him off. “So let’s hear it.”

Junhyeok glares at him. “I’m not done. Like I was saying, I had to think of the perfect dare. Something that would make me indisputably victorious, and end this forever. Something I knew you wouldn’t do, couldn’t bring yourself to do. Something you’d never think of daring me to do, because it lies so far outside of your realm of experience, and plays so perfectly on your weaknesses—”

“Oh my _god_ , just get to the point!”

“I dare you,” Junhyeok turns with a triumphant smile, “to kiss me!”

Everything grinds to a halt. Jae has to process each word to make sure he understood it—his Korean isn’t perfect, okay—and in the meantime Junhyeok’s grin just grows wider.

Jae finally processes the words. What a stupid dare.

“See, I—” Junhyeok announces, at the exact same moment as Jae seizes his shoulders, and kisses him.

It’s kind of—weird. Junhyeok has a—pillowy? mouth, and he’s pretty much immobile, and Jae didn’t really get the terms defined here before he launched into this so he’s not sure how much kissing constitutes the full extent of the dare. Does a K-drama style lip press count? Does he need to—like, try? He’s not really willing to do anything with tongues but he really wants to win—

At about this time, Jae realizes that this kiss has gone on way too long.

He leaps backwards and stares at Junhyeok. Who stares at him.

“You kissed me,” Junhyeok says.

“You dared me to.” Jae points out.

“I didn’t think you’d actually do it!”

“You dared me to!”

“Oh my god.”

 

 

The apartment returns to silence, but this time it’s more awkward. Junhyeok shakes his hand— _shakes his hand_ —and says, “well, I guess it’s your turn.” Then they return to their respective rooms. Wonpil comes in at some point, and a little while later, the door to the room opens and Brian comes in.

“I thought you were on a date,” Jae says.

“I was.” Brian grins in his direction as he flops down onto his bed. “But, you know, I missed you.”

“She wasn’t into you.”

“I guess not.” Brian sighs. “Anyway, I figured it’d be kind of dangerous to leave you and Junhyeok here alone for too long.”

Jae laughs a little too loudly in response, but Brian doesn’t seem to notice.

Jae pretty much gets no sleep that night, and the sleep he does get is punctuated with weird nightmares of the six of them running around a haunted circus while JYP, dressed as a clown, chases them, until finally they run onto the Twice music video set—Jae decides not to look for too much meaning in his dreams when he wakes up in the morning. But his brain hums loudly all day, and he’s very much aware that he and Junhyeok aren’t making eye contact. It was just a _dare_.

But around one in the afternoon, Jae starts to get worried. This could just be his blood sugar dropping, of course, but he’s starting to remember all those weird, legend-like stories about the different ways Kpop bands fell apart, all the rumors floating around that didn’t match up with the official versions given to the public. What if this is the beginning of the end, for them? Even if it didn’t mean anything, what if just the idea of mixing work with play snowballed into something so catastrophic that their band couldn’t recover? Jae dated a coworker once, in college, and their relationship ended when she read the entire song Jae had written to her to their attentive coworkers who laughed hysterically over his well-crafted lines _eyes like honey / chillin’ with you makes me funny_. Jae makes a mental note to make sure the follow-up to “Congratulations” is an ode to her. The point is, don’t mess around with people you work with.

The problem remains, though, that Junhyeok had apparently only dared him on the premise that nothing would transpire, and Jae shot his premise to smithereens, and now Jae just really really really really really wants everything to be okay again but oh god how is he supposed to have this conversation?

 

 

“Listen,” Jae says, standing awkwardly beside the door to Junhyeok’s room. “We need to have a conversation about—” Jae suddenly realizes that he doesn’t know how to say _my intense anxiety about the deterioration of our friendship and the dynamics of this band_ in Korean, so he finishes, “—stuff.”

Junhyeok just blinks, his mouth open slightly. Jae reminds himself not to look at his (stupid and lewd) mouth.

Jae takes a deep breath. “See, the thing is—”

“Stop.” Junhyeok holds up a hand. “The thing is that you’re confused. You didn’t expect things to escalate, and when caught between your pride and your misgivings, you went with your pride, and you definitely didn’t expect to _like it_ —which, come on, it’s me, who wouldn’t like it—and now you’re freaking out because ‘what does this mean about me?’ and ‘what does this mean for the band?’ and you’ve already come up with at least six different scenarios where the band falls apart because we kissed. On top of that, you’re sexually inexperienced— _relatively_ , don’t look at me like that, you know it’s true—and you feel like you’re way out of your depth here.”

Jae gapes. Yeah, he _does_ feel out of his depth here. And he also wants to throttle Junhyeok for looking so smug about it, but he can’t really. Figure out. Words?

“To answer your question,” Junhyeok continues, standing up from his bed and smoothing his shirt, “This isn’t going to destroy our band. If you and Sungjin fighting for three freaking months about the last word on the third line of ‘Colors’ didn’t destroy us, this won’t. It’s just a kiss, Jae. Chill out.”

Junhyeok brushes past him and heads out the door. Just as he crosses the threshold, he stops and quirks a smile in Jae’s direction.

“And don’t worry. If you want to kiss me again, I’ll let you.” The door closes behind him with a click. 

Jae blinks.

“—wait, what?”


End file.
